The government said emergency funds for passports would be debated this week.

In a statement late on Tuesday, the federal police said the decision to stop issuing new passports “stems from a dearth of funds earmarked to the activities of migratory control and the issuance of travel documents”.

There’s a lot of finger-pointing, of course, and a long history corruption, and trying to look like a country with strong infrastructure, and whatever, but it all comes down to one thing: overspending.

So far, investigations into the Odebrecht case in Ecuador have led to the imprisonment of eight people, among them an uncle of re-elected Vice President Jorge Glas and the former Minister of Electricity Alecksey Mosquera.

General Comptroller Carlos Polit, who is currently outside the country, has been involved, but due to his position, he reportedly enjoys judicial privilege.

Ecuador’s lead prosecutor Carlos Baca alleges that “60 percent of the corruption plot arrived and went through Panamanian ports.”

the court’s judges voted 4-3 to clear Mr. Temer and former President Dilma Rousseff of charges they used proceeds from the country’s vast Car Wash corruption scandal to fund their 2014 election campaign.

Interestingly,

The majority of the court’s judges said this week that their understanding of electoral law meant that they should only consider evidence available around the time when the case was first filed more than two years ago, before much of the Car Wash evidence was collected.

Police in Brazil have seized 60 assault rifles that had been smuggled from the US city of Miami in a shipment of swimming pool heaters.

The weapons, which included 45 AK-47 guns, were found at the cargo terminal at Rio de Janeiro’s Galeao International Airport.

Four people have been arrested, police said.
. . .
It is believed the guns could have been sold in Brazil for up to $1.5m (£1.1m) in total. Detectives are investigating an exporter in Miami, Globo newspaper reported without identifying them.

Yet this penalty is just one part of the plea deal; another component played out in a very public way earlier this month, when J&F co-owner Joesley Batista turned over a secret recording to prosecutors. That recording — which appears to show Temer condoning the payment of hush money to an imprisoned politician — leaked to media earlier this month, prompting protests in the streets and questions of whether Temer’s tenure could survive the scandal.

His lawyers say that a secret recording that appears to incriminate him has been edited 70 times.
. . .
President Temer was secretly recorded by Joesley Batista, president of Brazilian giant meat-packing firm JBS, during a late-night, unscheduled meeting.
The wealthy businessman made the recording as part of a plea bargain with the prosecutor’s office.
On the tape, Mr Temer seems to signal his approval for illegal payments to the former speaker of the lower house of Congress, Eduardo Cunha, who was jailed for corruption last year.
. . .
Many expected the president to resign once the contents of the tape were made public.

Mr. Maduro, then Venezuela’s foreign minister, personally handed Ms. Moura $11 million in cash in his Caracas office, she said in the testimony given in court to Brazilian prosecutors in exchange for a reduced sentence on corruption charges. Brazil’s two largest construction companies, Odebrecht SA and Andrade Gutierrez, which are under investigation in Brazil for allegedly paying bribes to Mr. da Silva, wired her an additional $9 million to an offshore account, Ms. Moura said.

As the article correctly points out,

Under Mr. Chávez, Odebrecht became the biggest contractor in Venezuela, receiving roughly $11 billion over 14 years for projects ranging from irrigation channels to airports.
. . .
Odebrecht admitted to paying $98 million in bribes in Venezuela.

Now

The heads of Odebrecht and Andrade Gutierrez, as well as Mr. Santana and Ms. Moura, are all in jail or confined to their homes after being convicted on corruption charges related to Car Wash.

And they’re willing to talk.

Will this have any effect on Venezuela’s deteriorating condition? I doubt it; but it will have repercussions in Brazil.

Another story that the media largely ignore is that of the collapse of Venezuela under socialism. The Left’s “May Day”—better titled Victims of Communism Day— came and went with barely a peep about the collapse of the once-vibrant Latin American nation under Hugo Chavez/Nicolás Maduro Stalinism. Just as Turkey is about to fall under the veil of Islamist tyranny, Venezuela is reaching the logical conclusion of Leftist tyranny. Thousands have been taking to the streets in protest. Citizens are going hungry in a country that was once the richest in the region. The government is seizing the assets of global corporations. Inflation is running at 280 percent. In a nation that had banned private gun ownership, Maduro is now planning to arm up to 400,000 loyalists to preserve some semblance of order. Central planning and other attacks on individual liberty and private property rights have turned Venezuela into another failed Communist experiment, leaving its people mired in violence, poverty, and misery.

You might think that the downfall of a nation in America’s hemisphere under democratically elected socialists might be subject to intense media coverage. You would be wrong. Could it be that the Left does not wish to report on the end results of its policies?

Ministry data published this week showed cases of infant mortality rose 30 per cent, maternal mortality 65 per cent and malaria shot up 76 per cent last year. There was also a jump in illnesses such as diphtheria and Zika.

In a document revealed by Brazil’s Federal Supreme Tribunal, the wife of Brazilian publicist Joao Santana, Mónica Moura, confessed that she received $11 million at the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry headquarters, directly from Nicolás’ hands when he was the Foreign Minister. The Santana-Moura partnership was the brains behind el finado’s last re-election campaign back in 2012: “Chávez, corazón del pueblo.”

As part of her plea bargain with Brazilian justice, Moura confessed under oath that Nicolás handed her $11 million in cash and still owed her $15 more million. Nicolás demanded Moura receive all payments for the campaign without declaring them, with some of the payments fronted Odebrecht and Andrade Gutierrez.